Audio reaction test

Nobody has published a large study that timed people on the beep of a web page. The nearest we could read is a small study of 14 people who reacted to a sound on a laptop: their average was 284 ms^[1]. With so few people that figure is a mark to look at, not a rank, and the first view of your result shows it beside your time that way. A reaction to a sound is often found to be a little quicker than a reaction to a picture, which is why a number from a visual test is no fair yardstick here. How we measured this also draws your earlier results as short ticks on a ruler.

To see how your ear and your eye compare, take this test and then the reaction time test on the same device, and look at the two middle times. The difference is yours, and it is more informative than any average.

The beep is not played when our code asks for it. It is scheduled on the audio clock of your device, which plays it on an exact sample, and the page then works out the moment you could hear it on the clock that your presses are timed on. Your press is timed from the browser's own record of your tap, click or key, not from the moment our code got round to reading it.

Between the moment a device plays a sound and the moment it leaves the speaker there is a delay, often tens of milliseconds, and it differs from one device and one pair of headphones to the next. Your browser can report this delay for the device it runs on. When it does, the page takes it off every try, so each time runs from the moment the beep could be heard. When it does not, the times include the delay and run a little long, and the result is labelled so. A wireless headset adds a delay that no browser can see, which is another reason to compare yourself only with results made on the same device.

If you switch to another tab or app during a try, or the screen stalls while the beep is due, that try does not count and you do it again. Your result is saved in this browser and nowhere else: it never goes into a link, and it is never sent to us. You can read about us to see who makes the site.

Browsers do not let a page play sound until you have pressed or tapped something on it. This protects you from pages that start shouting by themselves. For this test that means the Start button does two jobs: it starts the run and it wakes the sound. The test beep, from the second button, is the same beep as in the test, so you can set the volume before you start. The page never plays a sound unless you press something first.

• Set the volume so that the beep is clear but not painful. A very quiet beep is heard late.
• Use wired headphones if you can: they add less delay than a wireless headset, and the page can allow for what the browser reports.
• Keep your finger on the button or the key, so that you only have to press.
• Close your eyes if you like. Nothing on the screen changes when the beep comes.
• Do not guess. A press before the beep gives you no time at all, and the try is done again.

If you would rather watch than listen, the reaction time test turns the whole screen green, and the F1 reaction test asks you to react to a row of start lights going out.